990 JOURNAL. 
machinery is clumsy beyond what I could have imagined, and the 
improvement talked of is to be on a French model; which will be 
more expensive than one of Boulton’s, and, compared with it, is as 
the old hammer for striking coin is to the screw dies now used here. 
The greater part of the coin still current in Chile is of rough pieces 
of silver, weighed and cut in any shape, and struck with the hammer, 
and far ruder than any I had seen before. This mode of coining is, 
however, now discontinued ; and the scarcely less tedious method of 
first punching the metal, and then placing each piece by hand in the 
screw, has taken place of it. The assay department, however, is in a 
better, 7. e. a more modern state ; but I am too sorry a chemist to be 
able to give a proper account of it. I understand government has it 
in contemplation to issue a coinage of low value, which will be of 
great advantage to the people. I have often been struck with the 
inconvenience of the want of small coin here. There is nothing in 
circulation under the value of a quartillo, or quarter of a real, which, 
if the dollar be worth four shillings and sixpence, is more than three 
half-pence ; and quartillos are not coined here, and are so scarce, that 
I have only seen three since April: consequently we may call the 
smallest common coin the medio, or near threepence halfpenny; a 
sum for which, at the price of bread and beef here, a whole family 
may be fed. What then is the single labourer to do? This evil, 
great as it is, has occasioned a greater. In order to accommodate 
purchasers with a quantity under the value of a medio, or quartillo, 
the owners of pulperias (a kind of huckster’s shops) give in exchange 
for dollars or reals promissory notes: but these notes, even where 
the article bought is halfa dollar, and the note for half, the pulperia 
man will not discount in cash, but in goods ; so that he makes sure 
of the poor man’s whole coin, besides the chance that a peasant, who 
does not read or write, may lose or destroy the note itself. Many 
and rapid fortunes have been made by these notes, and the loss to 
the poor has amounted to more than any one of the government 
direct taxes. This has not been overlooked by some of the great 
merchants connected with the minister here; and a number of retail 
shops have been set up at their expense, though under the names of 
